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Echo Here

10 July 2010

It’s been another splendid week in the high desert. Final grades were released for the last session of classes. I earned my first B, having made it to senior level with straight A’s, so this was cause for a few moments of grieving. I was fully expecting a B but seeing it in bold print in the grade roster made it official. Maybe I won’t be such a nerd anymore. After all, nobody looks at grades anyway. Nobody.

Classes started again Tuesday. I was planning on taking three classes simultaneously but all of my classes were mysteriously dropped for a four-hour period on Thursday due to a financial aid fiasco. I was able to get back into the classes after a few frantic phone calls, but my philosophy class was full and the teacher refused to give me an override. I already had the first assignment done and sent her several emails to no avail. All is not lost; at least I got a full $900 refund for the class and textbook. And, the extra time will be nice. Seems I flirt with burnout too much anyway. My mountain bike hasn’t been ridden for over a week.

It’s good to be back at the IT tech desk in the business college after taking the month of June off to concentrate on class work. I have one management class and one online technical writing class. I enjoy both classes a lot. For the fourth consecutive year, I’m doing my mid-summer marathon training spurt. I’m about a week away from the part where I vow to never run again and pack my running shoes away deep in the closet until next May.

But this year I have registered for a string of events throughout the summer in an attempt to harness my limited supply of morale. And, the Flagstaff marathon is coming up in a few weeks. The Flagstaff marathon appeals to me because it is on dirt and because I can train on the actual course and because it is local and because it is cheap. It also happens to be the hardest marathon in the Southwest, being entirely above 8,000 elevation with 2,200 feet of climbing. Of course I want to run it but to be on track for it I should be running 18 mile long runs now instead of the 12 mile long runs I do. There is a difference. And it is significant. The next event is the Snowbowl hill climb—a seven mile, 2200’ climb on a paved road. This one sincerely worries me. I tell myself that I will just walk up, but I know I won’t. I will run up and die doing it, or worse—not finish. We have these conversations frequently.

Tomorrow is another long day at the furniture store. With a little over two weeks of business left things are approaching frantic. The owners are frenzied over all the details left to finish, the manager is frazzled because he still doesn’t have a job—no easy task in Flagstaff, and I am stressed because I can’t help enough. Repeat, I am stressed because I can’t help enough. Yep, it’s my grandfather all over again. I can’t rest if there is somebody to help. I know I’ve got a hard life ahead but I’m looking forward to it. My boss calls and pleads and says can’t you please come for a few hours this afternoon and I say I guess the homework can wait and I’ll be right over and this is the way it goes. I tell him sternly that no more than one day a week will I work but it somehow ends up being three days…

Sunday Tim and Rose are planning to stop in on their drive from Virginia to the west. Monday there is an externship in Phoenix again which promises to be interesting and informative. All of which means I should be working ahead on homework rather than writing further in this blog that nobody reads. G’night all.